Fear is just a feeling

As a young man, on the first weekend of March, I found myself standing next to the icy Skykomish River in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington State, shivering in nothing but a thin wetsuit, preparing to run a massive, class 5, whitewater rapid called, Boulder Drop. As is often the case when young men do foolish things, it was because of a woman.

My new girlfriend had signed up to train as a whitewater river rafting guide. Facing the prospect of her spending every weekend camping in the mountains with a bunch of drunken, and surely depraved, yahoos, I decided that I too would sign up for guide training. Yet what began as a hormone-fueled impulse turned into one of the most profound experiences of my life; one that taught me far more about myself, and incidentally about public speaking, than it did about the sport of rafting.

There is nothing quite like standing at the top of an enormous, seething, churning rapid to strip you down to the barest elements of primal fear and pride. Your brain, your entire body, is screaming, “WE’RE GONNA DIE.”  Yet to give in to the fear, to walk around the rapid under the withering gaze of the other guides, your friends and peers, is equally unthinkable. So you climb in the boat and push off.

After more than a few spectacular mishaps that always seem to end with you (me) curled around a rock at the side of the river, gasping for air, you learn not only the skills you need to safely navigate rapids with your crew, most of the time, you also learn something far more important. You learn that fear is just a feeling. It’s not real.

What we fear the most rarely happens. It usually wasn’t even very likely in the first place.

Standing in the wings of the auditorium, waiting for the announcer to call your name, or sitting in the conference room, waiting for the CEO to ask you to give your presentation, it may seem certain that you are going to fail in the most dramatic and horrifying way possible; that you’ll be laughed out of the room with your career, your reputation and your future in tatters. But that’s just a feeling. It’s not real.

But that doesn’t mean it’s useless. Instead of letting it wash over you and take control of your mind and body, you can push the fear down, squeeze it into a white-hot ball of energy deep in your gut and use it to sharpen your focus, heighten your senses and quicken your mental reflexes, as you focus entirely on what you need to do.

Whether you’re facing certain death or the Board of Directors, fear can be an ally and a friend. It can make you better than you’ve ever been.

And for that lesson, I thank you, Kimberly.